The Pitman High School girls volleyball program had already clinched the Central California Athletic League championship for the fifth straight year entering the week after a sweep of Gregori on Thursday. Nevertheless, there remained an important milestone left to accomplish.

There is always extra motivation on each side of the net when Pitman and crosstown rival Turlock get together, but it was the Bulldogs standing in the way on Tuesday night of the Pride’s fourth straight undefeated CCAL campaign and a 48th straight win against a conference opponent.

In the final regular season contest for each team, the Pride earned a sweep (25-21, 25-21, 25-19) over the Bulldogs to accomplish that goal.

The Pride, with another 10-0 league run and a 12th conference championship to their name, end the regular season with a 26-9 overall record. Turlock, meanwhile, finished their conference run tied for second place with Downey with matching 7-3 records. By finishing in the top three of the CCAL, the Pride, Bulldogs and Knights are all automatic qualifiers to the postseason. Turlock will enter with a 22-10 overall record.

“I mean, Turlock, they’re a heck of a team. They're probably the toughest team in CCAL for us to compete against,” said Pitman head coach Ari Amini. “After we played them the first time (a five-set thriller on Oct. 2), we knew it wasn't going to be easy, and they were going to come out fighting. But the girls were so hungry, saying all week they didn’t want to let them get a set off of us.”

They delivered on that promise.

After falling behind in the opening set 8-3, the Pride rode four kills from senior Maryn Hall and blocks from Rylee Ramos and Alyssa Moreno to eventually take a 15-14 lead. The Pride soon built a four point lead at 23-19 that they never relinquished, with Hall ending the set with a defiant kill.

After a few back-and-forth sequences in the early stages of the second set, the Pride took a 4-3 lead and never looked back, the set once again ending via a thunderous kill from Hall.

Hall then had five kills in a third and final frame that saw their lead get no smaller than five points after it was 21-16. The match ended with a block from senior Alyssa Moreno.

“They wanted to beat us,” said senior libero Aila Reich. “It was a little too close last time, so we were making sure to step on their neck and get it over with.”

Junior Amelia Spaulding led Turlock with 12 kills and a pair of blocks. Sophomore Isabella Macias had four kills to go along with an ace and a block for the Bulldogs.

Meanwhile, the 5-foot-11 Hall totaled 22 kills on the night to lead all players and bring her season total to 462 and her career mark to 1,406.

Hall and Reich are four-year varsity players who have been involved in each of the undefeated league campaigns over the last four years.

“Ari reminded us about the streak before the game,” Hall said. “It was definitely motivation to be 40-0 in our careers. We were definitely thinking about it and wanted to get it.”

Reich led the team with 20 digs to push her season sum to 402 and her career total to 1,440.

“We were young (in 2022), but we knew we had to step up into that role and just work hard and compete and come into every game hungry,” Reich said. “Going 40-0 is a great way to go out.”

Added Hall regarding the responsibilities of being a freshman on a contending varsity team in 2022: “We were stepping into a big role, and we were working hard for each other, to not let our teammates down. And it’s the exact same now… All of the girls, we’re super close and have such great chemistry. It’s just a lot of fun playing with each other.”

Amini described Hall as “eerily calm” during pregame warmups. “I could tell she was locked in and that she wanted to put the ball away,” he said. “She was just screaming (the ball) down the line. There's no better way to send her off her senior season than ending a match beating Turlock in three and just having high kill stats. I'm super proud of her.”

Hall said that she and fellow senior Kayliyah Williams spent time together the night before to lock in and tap into their killer mindsets.

Williams had 13 kills and 16 digs. Three of those kills came in the final stages of the third frame, helping the Pride build on their comfortable lead.

“A lot of people don’t realize that, while Kayliyah is battling the same outside position as Maryn, she’s like 5-foot-6. And she’s just jumping out the gym, hitting over these big blocker,” Amini said. “This can be a mental game, and she plays big, and she went out there and was just creaming the ball, hitting through the seam. I'm over the moon for her.”

Amini took over as head coach of the Pitman program last season, when the conference winning streak stood at just 28. Beginning the streak was longtime coach Kristen Pontes-Christian, who was working the scorer’s table inside the Pitman gymnasium on Tuesday.

“I'm lucky to be coming into a program that was already pretty well established, and adding my own ideologies and philosophies and getting coaches on my staff that follow them,” Amini said. “It's not just me, it's a village, and it's my coaches supporting me, backing me up, and the girls really buying into what I think is the Pitman Pride vision. Kristen has been nothing but supportive, asking me how it's going. She talks to the girls at school (she remains at Pitman as an English teacher), so it's really nice to have that kind of support, because she could have just stepped away. But she's here keeping score because she still wants a piece of it, because that's just the competitor she is.”

The 48-game winning streak in league play is the second-longest in program history. Between 2011 and 2015, Pontes-Christian led the Pride to 58 wins in a row while the program was a member of the Central California Conference. That included three consecutive 15-0 league marks from 2012 to 2014.

“She built such a strong foundation here, so she deserves a ton of credit,” Amini added.

Playoff brackets for all six divisions will be released by the Sac-Joaquin Section on Friday afternoon, with the first games getting underway next Tuesday, Oct. 28. Aside from Pitman and Turlock, the Denair (16-7), Hilmar (19-14) and Hughson (24-9) programs all entered Tuesday in strong positions to crack the postseason. Results from the night’s Trans-Valley League and Southern Athletic League games were not available by press time.

“I'm so excited for the playoffs," Reich said. “I want to just go out, walk away from the game knowing I put everything on the line and I did everything I could. That's enough for me.”

“It should be exciting,” Hall added. “I just want to cherish these last moments we have together.”